How Public Are We? Coverage of Sociology by the Associated Press

The recent and prolific attention to public sociology has involved a great deal of theoretical debate about its merits, flaws, and potential future within the discipline. Despite the loud call for becoming more public, existing research on the discipline lacks both an empirical understanding of where we are as well as a methodological rubric to guide future inquiry. This project explores one outlet for public sociology—the press—as a starting point for this line of research. Through an investigation of Associated Press stories featuring sociology and sociologists, we seek to provide a baseline for consideration of public sociology efforts by describing the current state of how our discipline and its members are portrayed in the press. Further, based on our findings we provide some insights for future research.     

Developmental Trends in Self-regulation among Low-income Toddlers

The attainment of self‐regulatory skills during the toddler years is an understudied issue, especially among low‐income children. The present study used growth modeling to examine the change over time and the final status in children's abilities to self‐regulate, in a sample of 2,441 low‐income children aged 14 to 36 months. Positive growth in their self‐regulation occurred between 14 and 36 months, but individual variation was observed in both the growth rates and final status. Children who showed high degrees of negativity at 14, 24 and 36 months grew at slower rates than other children. Boys and children high in negativity had lower scores in self‐regulation at 36 months than girls and children with low negativity, whereas higher quality mother–child interactions at 14 and 24 months were associated with better self‐regulation at 36 months. The results suggest that some children may be at risk for developing problems in regulation because of mother–child interaction patterns and child characteristics such as high negativity.     

Physical Activity and Physical Self‐Concept in Adolescence: A Comparison of Girls at the Extremes of the Biological Maturation Continuum

This study examined differences in physical activity and physical self‐concept between the least and most biologically mature female adolescents within chronological age and academic year groups. A total of 252 British female adolescents (M age = 12.9 years; SD = .7) in Years 7–9 completed self‐report measures to assess physical activity and physical self‐concept. Percentage of predicted adult (mature) stature served as the index of biological maturation. Univariate analyses of covariance, controlling for decimal age, revealed that the least mature girls generally held higher perceptions of physical self‐concept but were no more, or less, active than the most mature girls. A subsequent meta‐analysis suggested, however, that across age and year groups the least mature girls were more active than the most mature girls.     

Likelihood-Based Inference for Semi-Competing Risks

Consider semi-competing risks data (two times to concurrent events are studied but only one of them is right-censored by the other one) where the link between the times Y and C to non-terminal and terminal events, respectively, is modeled by a family of Archimedean copulas. Moreover, both Y and C are submitted to an independent right censoring variable D. We propose to estimate the parameter of the copula and some resulting survival functions using a pseudo maximum likelihood approach. The main advantage of this procedure is that it extends to multidimensional parameters copulas. We perform simulations to study the behavior of our estimation procedure and its impact on other related estimators and we apply our method to real data coming from a study on the Hodgkin disease.     

Analysis of repeated categorical responses from fully and partially cross-classified data

Many follow-up studies involve categorical data measured on the same individual at different times. Frequently, some of the individuals are missing one or more of the measurements. This results in a contingency table with both fully and partially cross-classified data. Two models can be used to analyze data of this type: (i) The multiple-sample model, in which all the study subjects with the same configuration of missing observations are considered a separate sample. (ii) The single-sample model, which assumes that the missing observations are the result of a mechanism causing subjects to lose the informtion from one or some of the measurements. In this work we compare the two approaches and show that under certain conditions, the two models yield the same maximum likelihood estimates of the cell probabilities in the underlying contingency table.     

Financial management, coping and debt in households under financial strain

This study looks at how households cope financially with a budget under a certain financial strain (after the birth of a new baby), and particularly examines their financial management practices and debting behaviour. Other factors associated with debt status caused by financial strain — particularly psychological variables — are also examined. A number of indexes were calculated from questionnaire data and used to measure these variables. The results showed that being in debt was significantly associated with feelings of coping less well and with better financial management. Better coping was also significantly associated with being more ‘forwardlooking’ and having a more negative attitude towards debt. Better financial strategies were significantly associated with being less materialistic and having a more stable budget. The results confirm previous findings that psychological and behavioural variables have a considerable impact on being in or keeping out of debt, but also suggest that perceived poor coping and being in debt during a period of particular financial strain may actually lead to an improvement in financial management.     

Assessing the Impact of Social Factors on the Mental Health of Chinese at Risk Adolescents in Hong Kong

Correspondence to Dr Cindy Davis, University of Tennessee, College of Social Work, Nashville Campus, 193E Polk Avenue, Nashville, TN., 37210, USA. E-mail: cdavis3eutk.edu Summary The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship offamily, peer and school factors on the mental health of Chinesemale and female at risk adolescents and secondary school studentsin Hong Kong. Questionnaire surveys based on various standardizedassessment scales were conducted with 398 (183 female and 215male) Chinese at risk adolescents and 320 (160 female and 160male) Chinese secondary school students between 12 and 18 yearsof age in Hong Kong. Compared to secondary school students,at risk adolescents had poorer relations with parents, morenegative family and peer influence, a more negative school environment,and poorer social functioning. Findings also revealed that femaleparticipants had more somatic symptoms, anxiety, and depressioncompared to males. The importance of environmental factors onthe mental health of Chinese adolescents supports previous researchin Western countries. Implications for intervention and preventionwere discussed from a cross-cultural perspective.